Zzzzzanzibar.

Well I've just had a couple of days holiday, here on spice island.

We have come from the 3 ½ day AIM Tanzania Conference, in Dar es Salaam. It was a fantastic time, meeting other missionaries from all over Tanzania. I can't remember being so excited about eating peas and other vegetables that we don't get in Kahunda.

The speaker was a Canadian pastor called Barton Priebe www.dhbc.ca.

So we jumped on a ferry in the morning conference finished and found a place to stay in Stone town. Did the tourist shops and found the main market which was interesting.

The next day we went over to the east side of the island and chilled on the beach, it was the kind of place you see on a postcard. I managed to get a couple more chapters of Lord of the rings 1 read too! I'm at the part where Frodo and co are at Bree.

The next day Arne and I did a spice tour, we saw and tasted some fruits as well: jackfruit, marmalade orange, custard apple (by far my favourite, maybe because the name is so good), starfruit and something fairly sour, orange in colour, forgotten it's name. The spices we saw growing were: cinnamon, lemon grass, cloves, vanilla, turmeric, ginger, pepper and cayenne pepper. Vanilla is fairly expensive here because apparently they have to pollinate it by hand! We had fresh coconut as well, one of the guys climbed a palm tree, cut off a couple of coconuts which hit the ground with a thud then just shimmied down again.

It's strange paying high prices for things, inevitable though because we're in a tourist hotspot. The 3 hour flight to Mwanza tomorrow should be much more comfortable than the 16 hour bus journey down to Dar.

Pictures!

Arrived in Dar yesterday: 16 hour bus ride the day before we took a bus and a dala dala (between a minibus and car) to Mwanza from Kahunda that took about 3-4 hours I think.

So slept under the stars on the roof of the guys who are hosting us here in Dar, nice breeze.

I am in Dar so have internet, enough to upload pictures!

See more on my facebook (they are uploading faster on there:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=29929&id=100001021822378

or

http://www.facebook.com/jonny.oglesby

This is Kibera (the largest slum in Africa) located in Nairobi, which we visited. We were taken round and met the guy who heads up this project http://kiberampiramtaani.org/

This Picture is of me Margaret and Marlene on the catamaran just before leaving for one of the islands on my first Sunday here.

Boat trip

I have learnt how to make fish fillets! I used my recently learnt phrase on the lady called Adela, who we employ- mainly for our laundry. It was successful, fun and tasty. However I didn’t do the descaling or gutting because she did that when she arrived when I was leaving for the kindergarten. Next time I will be able to do it myself I’m sure. It was more similar to cutting the pork than I imagined.

Yesterday I arrived back from a 2 night trip to a village on a nearby island called about 1 hour by boat. I experienced a new kind of toilet and a new kind of shower, neither bad, just new, I managed just fine with them. The toilet was a hole in the ground and the shower a bucket one.

Bucket shower: A large bucket of water with a small container which you use to pour the water over you!

It was a trip I went on with a nurse (Arne and I live next door but one) she runs the clinics on different islands and makes trips out to them once a month. One day it was the mums and babies, they come and are weighed and see the nurse for any necessary vaccinations etc. I helped by writing down the wrights of the babies, on their cards (has a chart on also to see how well the baby is doing for its age). The next day it was the pregnant ladies, not a lot for me to do there, so I went on a walk with 2 of the guys from the clinic with my English/Swahili dictionary and a notepad, learnt some new words including cow and sick person (things we came across on our trip). The day before I played football with a load of primary school children, not all primary aged though! Left one of the footballs there.

Sunday we are heading to AIM conference in Dar Es Salam – I reckon it’s going to be a trip and a half. Bus to Mwanza, a 2 hour car journey, one time it took the nurse 12 hours. Then we spend the night in Mwanza and then take another bus down to Dar in the morning (I think it’s a 15hour ride). I have heard a load of stories about people’s different experiences of bus trips. One included the bus driver doing a hill start backwards at night on a road that has only similarities with a mountain road pass – I didn’t know that was even possible. And several times the men needing to get out and push. So I could be in for an adventurous trip.

Funny flower

Language learning I want to learn a very important phrase – please show me how to prepare a fillet of fish! So come Monday I will be learning how to prepare a tilapia fish.

Monday afternoon to Wednesday evening I am going on a trip to a place called Kisabe on the island called Mysome the journey by boat is an hour and then an hour’s hike once we arrive. It will be a new experience for me – Swahili only. It will feel like a million miles from anywhere.

Figured out why nothing I was making with flour was working, I have been using cassava flour and not wheat flour, cassava flour is made from pounding the root of the plant (called cassava I guess). Cassava flour doesn’t have the same proteins in as wheat flour, so that’s why the pancakes never worked and always fell apart.

We went to Mwanza on Tuesday and Wednesday last week, it was good to see the city and have an ice cream – what a treat that is. Arne couldn’t find a single magnet anywhere, our bedroom walls are metal so magnets hold things on them, it’s pretty cool. Blue tack will have to do for now.

We eat out at a place where there was a TV and we saw some Rugby and cricket so I had fun trying to explain those to Andy and Arne. Didn’t involve to too many glasses, salt and pepper holders, tomato ketchup to explain some of the Rugby laws.

On the way back to Kahunda we got a flat which made it more interesting, with six guys in the car it was changed in seconds, literally you would have missed it if you closed your eyes for two mins. Possibly even world record time. I can now make chi, which is tea with some tea masala spice in it the tea is half milk, half water and sugar.

We a have a kitten –not decided on a name yet. The novelty wore of incredibly quickly for me, but it came near enough toilet trained –bonus! Still waiting for it to catch it’s first geko.

We (Arne and I) went to the church ‘youth meeting’ on Thursday, but where was the youth? Ah there’s a difference. Youth in ‘the west’ is generally below 20 I’d say. Here however it’s 45… yeah 45 years old. Funny, people in the west would probably like to be called youth when they are that age, am I right?

My cooking skills are broadening quickly, made butternut squash soup with squash from Mwanza, have been taught how to make cabbage coleslaw, a secondary student tried to teach me to make chapattis and Mandazi (close to a doughnut) but failed due to wrong flour, remember the process though.